“But could something think, understand, and so on solely in virtue of being a computer with the right sort of program? Could instantiating a program, the right program of course, by itself be a sufficient condition of understanding?"This I think is the right question to ask, though it is usually confused with one or more of the earlier questions, and the answer to it is no.”

“The possibility of incorrect results in the presence of unlucky timing is so important in concurrent programming that it has a name: a race condition. A race condition occurs when the correctness of a computation depends on the relative timing or interleaving of multiple threads by the runtime; in other words, when getting the right answer relies on lucky timing.”

“She knew what he was thinking: if she was asking questions like these, she was trying to understand. Trying to forgive him. He was right.”

“On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”

“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!”

“Is that the only way?" Tom asked her. "Vik and I tried net-sending with a thought interface during Programming once, but I couldn't concentrate on just one thing at a time."Vik nodded. "His programming questions were always like, 'Vik, how do steak boobs function?”